In a cloud computing environment, computing is delivered as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices as a metered service over a network, such as the Internet. In such an environment, computation, software, data access and storage services are provided to users that do not require knowledge of the physical location and configuration of the system that delivers the services.
The functions of the cloud computing environment are performed by a data center, which includes various types of hardware components (e.g., storage controllers, network switches, physical compute machines). In a large data center, there may be multiple units of the same type of hardware component (e.g., hundreds of the same compute blade). As a result, when a hardware component is relocated from its original location (e.g., relocating a compute blade from one chassis to another chassis on a different rack), it may be difficult to locate that hardware component at its new location, especially in a large data center that may be spread out over a large geographic area. Consequently, a user may end up spending lots of time in attempting to locate the hardware component's new location thereby causing a time consuming and frustrating experience for the user.